Our knot-shaped bread is inspired by the recipe To make
Jamblesfrom
Sallets, Humbles, & Shrewsbery
Cakes, where
small cakes are shaped “into Letters
or Knots of
what fashion you please.”
Ingredients: white bread, olive oil, butter.

Original recipe from Un Vivendier:
Snails, on any good meat, piglet or other. The meat is cut up into
chunks and cooked in good bouillon, then set to dry on a clean cloth.
Get white bread crumbs tempered in verjuice, and egg yolks, everything
strained, saffron, ginger, cloves, grains of paradise and long pepper,
distempered with wine and vinegar. Boil everything together. Set out
your meat in platters, pour the sauce on top.

Original recipe from Le Menangier de Paris:
Frogs. To catch them have a line and a hook with a bait of meat or a
red rag, and having caught the frogs, cut them across the body near the
thighs, and take out the foulness from the hindparts, and take the two
thighs, cut off the feet, and skin the thighs all raw, then take cold
water, and wash them; if the thighs remain for a night in cold water,
they be so much the better and tenderer. And when they be thus steeped,
let them be washed in warm water, then put to a towel and dried; the
aforesaid thighs, thus washed and dried, must be rolled in flour and
then fried in oil, fat or some other liquid, and let them be served in
a bowl with spice powder thereon.

Original
recipe
from Libro della cucina del
secolo XIV: Of little leaves. Take spinach and chard; pick them
over well and boil them. Then remove them and chop them very well with
a knife; then take parsley, fennel, anise[?] onions, chop them and mash
them with a knife, and fry them well in oil; take other "little herbs"
and fry them all together, and add a little water and bring to the
boil; add pepper and spices and serve.

Our
version: spinach
& chard are
boiled until done, then chopped into small pieces. They are then
sautéed in olive oil along with chopped onions & fresh
parsley.
Our version of this recipe omits the anise, as it is used elsewhere in
the feast; we have also left out the fennel.

Original
recipe
from Un Vivendier:
Sicilian Vermicelli are made of dough as fine as small worms that are
found in cheese. Young country girls make them in summertime for the
whole year, drying them in the sun to make them last longer. They
should be well culled and washed, then set to dry as was said for the
Rice, and cooked in good fat bouillon with a good lot of saffron; when
dishing up, fine grated cheese sprinkled on top.

Our
version: vermicelli
pasta is cooked in a vegetable broth until al denté; grated cheese is sprinkled on
top just before serving.
Our version of this recipe keeps the dish vegetarian-friendly by
boiling the noodles in vegetable based bouillon and not one of "good fat."

Source: Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon
Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the
Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). New York: for The
Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

Our inspiration for Shells comes from To
make Shelbread, from A Daily
Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewoman, 1617, where seashells are
used as the molds for small cakes. Our shell cookies are flavored with
lemon & rosewater as are the cakes in the original receipt.
Ingredients: eggs,
sugar, baker's ammonia, lemon flavoring, rosewater, & flour.

Original
recipe
from Utilis Coquinario:
To make a fawn. Take the leaves & blossoms of beans & pound
them in a mortar & temper them up with the broth of fresh beef or
of capons. And do there-to minced white bread that it be thick, &
salt it; & do there-to sugar & saffron, & dress it in
dishes & set there-on blossoms of beans & serve it forth.

Our
version: fava
beans are cooked in a vegetable broth, and seasoned with saffron &
sugar.

Our
version of this recipe uses beans instead of just the leaves &
blossoms; the beans are left whole and not mashed. In addition, the
dish is kept vegetarian-friendly by eliminating the beef or chicken
bouillon and
cooking in a vegetable based broth instead. The thickening agent, the
bread crumbs, is not necessary when using unmashed beans and has been
left out.

Ingredients: fava
beans, vegetable bouillon, saffron, sugar, & salt.

Source:
Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye
on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century
(Including the Forme of Cury). New York: for The Early English Text
Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

Original
recipe
from MS Harley 5401:
To make Char de Crabb. Recipe crabapples & boil them in water till
they be soft, & take honey & strain the crabs there-with
through a cloth. put to a 3rd part of clarified honey & a quantity
of sandalwood, & color it with saffron; then put there-to a
quantity of powder of pepper & 2d worth of the flour of anise &
a quantity of powder of licorice. Then take grated bread & mold it
up there-with, & put it in pie shells & serve it forth.

Our
version:
sliced apples are cooked until soft with honey & anise.

Our version of this recipe is simply apples cooked in honey &
flavored with anise, and is not the apple pie of the original receipt.
The bread crumbs, needed to thicken a pie filling, have been left out.

Original
recipe
from MS Beinecke 163: Hats.
Make a pastry dough of prepared flour, kneaded with yolks of eggs;
& make a stuffing of veal & pork, boiled & ground, with
yolks of eggs; marrow diced, & dates minced; currants; sugar,
saffron & salt & spices; & mix all together. And make your
pastry on round foils of the breadth of a saucer, as thin as may be
drawn. Turn it double, that the edges may come to the middle of the
foil; then turn it together that the edges on the bigger side meet all
about, & the smaller side turn upward without in the manner of a
hat. And close well the edges that they hold well. Fill there-on your
stuffing. Have a batter of yolks of eggs & wheat flour in the open
side that is toward. Look there-in the stuffing be closed, & set it
in hot grease upright. When the batter is fried, you may lay it down
& fry it all over.

Our
version: a meat pie filling is made from beef,
eggs, dried fruits, & spices.
The filling is stuffed into small rounds of pastry shaped to resemble
hats, then baked. They are garnished with a small feather.

Our version of this recipe uses beef instead of the veal & pork
mixture. The marrow has been left out, and the pies are baked and not
fried.
Ingredients: pie
pastry, beef, egg yolks, dates, currants, sugar, salt, black pepper,
ginger, & olive oil.